Page 32 of Fractured Fates

Lunch? My stomach growls more violently at the prospect. If I had any money to use in a vending machine, I’d march there right now, jocks be damned.

I rub my stomach and peer around, catching the eyes of several other students staring my way despite the fact Winnie has chosen the end of the far right corner of the table, tucked away as much out of sight as it’s possible to be in this hall.

“Am I stopping you from sitting with your friends?” I ask, suddenly guilty that, not only have I deprived my new roomie of her breakfast, but also her usual social interactions.

Winnie’s gaze drops towards the tabletop and she scratches her thumbnail over the surface.

“I don’t really have any other friends. I mean, Saskia was my best friend, but she’s gone now.”

“You don’t have other friends?” I blurt out inadvertently in astonishment, feeling even more guilty when Winnie’s face bleeds bright red.

“Money and power talks here,” Winnie whispers over the table. “So if you don’t have any like me, if your parents don’t sit on the Council, it’s near impossible to gain any friends.”

“Right,” I say, “well, that sounds stuck-up and seriously shitty.”

Winnie manages a smile. “It is both, trust me.” Then she shakes herself and that air of cheerfulness returns. “But I’m extremely grateful to be here and learning everything I am.”

“And living in a smelly hole with damp and a cracked window.”

This time she actually laughs, a noise that stops abruptly when her gaze lands on something above my head.

I turn, and find Stone standing directly behind my chair, looking as surprised to see me as I am to see him. No, scratch that, it’s not surprise, it’s disdain. His gaze travels down my form and then he grabs my upper arm and pulls me to my feet.

“What the Hell!” I screech.

“Come with me please, Miss Blackwaters.”

11

Rhi

I’m tooshocked to reply, or to make any kind of fight, my feet moving automatically as he marches me down the row between the tables, out of the hall, and into a corridor. That strange magical hook dragging me after him. Half way down the hallway, I finally come to and regain my voice.

“What are you doing?” I say, attempting to shake off his firm grip with absolutely no luck at all. “What are you even doing here, Stone?”

“Professor Stone.”

I jolt to a stop, my heels digging into the carpet beneath our feet, and he’s forced to stop too.

“What?! Professor Stone?!” I glance down at what he’s wearing. No jeans and leather jacket today. No, he’s wearing a very-well-cut dark suit that emphasizes his physique and is at complete odds to the biker I met two days ago. “You work here?”

His eyes dart along the corridor. “Come on,” he says, tugging on my arm and forcing me to walk again.

“You never told me you worked here,” I hiss as we march up a flight of stairs and down two more corridors.

“You never asked.”

“You lied to me.”

“How exactly did I lie to you, Miss Blackwaters?” he asks, stopping outside a door with his name inscribed on it. Yep, there’s no doubting it. He really isProfessorStone, the letters glaring back at me in gold paint.

“You didn’t tell me you worked here. That you were one of the teachers.”

He yanks a key from his pocket, thrusts it into the lock and waves his hand in front of the mechanism whispering something as he does. I need to get better at hearing so I can copy these damn spells.

“That wasn’t a lie,” he says, slamming open the door and dragging me inside.

I expect to find myself in an office, but it isn’t, it’s a small classroom. A giant blackboard lining the back wall, a desk placed in front and then rows of chairs facing that way. Objects hang from the ceiling and are pinned to the walls, but I have no chance to look at them as he pulls me to the back of the classroom and into another room. This seems to be his office – another desk, a leather-backed chair and a large bookcase within.